Guild Wars 2

In my opinion, Venoms are in a bad place. You can use Venoms with any weapon but not any build.
It’s painfully obvious you must spec into them for them to be a useful utility because they are simply outclassed by every other thief utility on their own or unspecced.
The only exceptions to this is Basilisk Venom and Devourer Venom for obvious reasons.

I don’t think Venoms are overpowered or underpowered, but it’s an artificial balance. Just like Diamond Skin (ignore the fact it’s worthless) is to Rabid Amulet users, the problem is still there, just covered up.

Lets look at the design issues:

• Venom stacks. To prevent a super powerful single hit utility, limiting the output damage into stacks players must apply to maximize their damage. This is a double edge sword as it increases damage desired but decreases skillful play as it rewards spamming.
• The more Venoms, the better. Just a single venom can be outclassed by an already existing trait and skill. Why take Skale Venom when Caltrops is significantly better with more damage and faster recharge? Spider Venom can apply 30 seconds of poison but without cover the 45 second recharge it is utterly wasted as soon as that Elementalist swaps to Water Attunement.

In my opinion there is an easy solution to both these problems.
- Venoms no longer have stacks, instead they have a passive ability with an active.
- Venoms passive apply their conditions only on Stealth Attacks, except for Basilisk Venom.
- Venoms active applies Venom to nearby allies next attack.
- Basilisk Venom passive would be stealth attacks cannot be blocked, it’s active applies the stun to your next attack.
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Pros:
- Most thieves use stealth quite often even if their build isn’t stealth focus, making it a very versatile utility.
- It reduces the spike of conditions as well as keeping it a viable for condition and power builds.
- The punishment for failure is not nearly as high while the reward still remains good.

Cons:
- Would need major balance tweaks to the condition durations, these traits were designed to apply once every 45 seconds, even if the Venoms only have 1 stack, if their passive can trigger every 3-4 seconds that would be a bit broken with current condition duration of some Venoms.
- Even with short durations, being able to apply 3-4 different conditions in a single hit pretty often is already an issue with the condition meta, however, the condition problem of the meta stems from traits rather than utilities. So it could be a problem or not be, only testing will determine that.

I don’t use the other venoms because they suck at a base level and have 45 second cooldowns as if they are remotely as powerful as Dev or basilisk when they aren’t when those two are strong enough to use untraited.

Venoms suffer from 2 major problems in the current meta and while your suggestion is good it doesn’t really address the major issues with Venoms and it is a fairly complicated solution.

Problem number 1: Venoms require too much investment to be useful
This is a point that you’ve touched on but haven’t really delved into. Essentially, in order to bring Venoms up to par with other thief builds you need to run at least Quick Venoms, and Leeching Venoms. Without those traits most Venom skills are extremely sub par. With Venomour Aura on top of that Venoms become strong, but this is after an investment of 50 out of 70 trait points, 60 if you go for the Grandmaster in Deadly Arts. No other build requires a commitment of 60 trait points to bring it up to par with other options, but that’s only half the problem.

Venoms also take up Utility slots, which are normally used to give the thief survivability options. Since thieves have the lowest base health and second lowest base armor Thief survivality comes either from traits or Utility skills, but Venoms require both to be effective. You need the traits to make the Venoms worth it and then you need the Utility slots for the Venoms to make the traits worth the investment. The more you spec into Venoms the less you are able to survive.

Problem 1 Solution: move functionality from traits to the base skill
In my view the only way to solve this problem is to remove some of the traits buffing Venoms and add their effect to the base effect of Venom skills. In particular, Quick Venoms should be eliminated and the recharge for all Venoms should be lowered down to 35s (1s less than with Quick Venoms). In addition, at least one Venom needs to be made a stun breaker. In PvP you need you need a stun breaker to survive and a 35 second stun breaker is hardly OP as we already have one with a 30s CD.

Problem 2: Venom skill design is counter to their niche
This is a problem you were attempting to solve but I think your solution is overly complex. The current design of Venoms makes them only useful for bursts because the charges always come out in chunks. However, If I was going to go for a bursty build I’d stack crit damage and go for a backstab focused build and it would require much less investment in terms of traits and Utility skills to be effective. Venoms have plenty of room to give extra sustained pressure during a fight but the skill design is directly counter to that. The key example here is Spider Venom. Used in a burst it gives one stack of a long lasting Poison that can be easily removed by the enemy with one skill. Used over time it can provide constant pressure from Poison to an enemy through multiple removals in a build that otherwise may not have access to those conditions, like a Sword build.

Problem 2 Solution: give thieves more control over Venom charges
To solve this, thieves need more control over when the venom charges proc. My favorite suggestion was to make Venoms work like Mesmer Mantras. Using the skill gives you a number of charges, then using the skill again expends one charge to give you one proc of the Venom. This gives the thief complete control over when the charges come and allows him to properly space them out during a fight OR use them all at once for burst. It makes burst an option rather than the only strategy so it makes Venoms much more interesting and harder to predict. Since it doesn’t change the paradigm under which Venoms currently work, one skill gives you X charges of the Venom and then the charges proc the effect of the Venom, it is a simpler solution than the one you offered.

TLDR: Venoms need to stand up better without their traits and we need more control over when Venom charges proc.